


Lavender

by zaynealt



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Being held hostage, Connor doesn’t normally freak out but that’s what this whole fic is about, Emotional bonding, I Toned It Down Because My Little Brother Is My Beta Reader, Like VERY Mild For This Game, Panic Attacks, mild swearing, so maybe he’s a bit ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 00:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17693972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaynealt/pseuds/zaynealt
Summary: Connor freaks out during a mission and looses his ability to feel things around him, while at the same time feeling way too much.





	Lavender

It was supposed to be a simple mission.

STRESS LEVELS: 80%

The man forced Connor down into the chair. Now that his legs and arms had both been cuffed, there wasn’t much he could do. Connor was two times as powerful as an average human, but like this, he was helpless.

“It’s okay, Connor,” Hank was saying from where he was sitting across from Connor. “We’ll make it out of this, you hear me?”

Connor was a little confused at Hank’s sudden turn-around, because only seconds ago he had been cussing up a storm. But he was a little too preoccupied trying to untie his hands from behind his back.

It wasn’t working.

“Alright, suckers, listen here,” a man said, walking over to where Connor and Hank were sitting, tied to the chairs. “You’ve got nowhere to go, Deviant hunters. You’re gonna pay for your crimes today.”

Connor began to wiggle in his seat a little more violently.

“Stop moving!” One of the men snapped, holding his gun out at Connor.

The terrorists huddled a little closer, exchanging looks with each other and at the two cops tied up.

“We’ve got to kill somebody,” one of them said in a reasonable voice, “or else it won’t be taken seriously.”

Their were murmurs of agreement. Connor’s thirum pressure began to rise.

“Make it the human,” someone else hissed. “One of ‘em’s an android, he can just be replaced. A human death will actually get on the news.”

STRESS LEVELS: 90%

Connor tried to stand up, but his cuffed legs didn’t cooperate and his hands were still attached to the chair, so he fell to the side a little.

“No!” He yelled, “I’m a special investigative prototype model. I have information that the DPD needs, shoot me instead.”

One of the group snorted.

“Connor,” Hank said quietly, “shut the hell up.”

“Nice try,” the leader laughed, walking over and roughly grabbing Hank’s arm before forcing him up out of the chair. “Humans feel pain. Humans can break and give us the info.”

“I feel obligated to warn you, Lieutenant Anderson is extremely stubborn. You won’t get anything out of him.”

The man made a scoffing noise and continued to pull Hank away. Hank twisted, trying to throw him off, but the leader just pulled out a gun. Hank followed after that.

“Stop! Please don’t!” Connor yelled, pulling and pulling until he could feel the handcuffs leaving scratches on his synthetic skin.

“Relax, plastic, we’re only taking him to this table.”

The table was indeed, only four feet away. The terrorists sent an odd look in Connor’s direction, shoving Hank into the chair at the table.

One of them muttered something about how a machine shouldn’t be so concerned anyway. This same one, with a practiced spin of his wrist, pulled out a shotgun.

Then he held it to the Lieutenant’s head. 

“Now,” he said grimily, flashing his teeth as the man across the table started a camera. “I want you to tell everyone that the DPD is harboring known criminals, and how they deserve to be punished.”

“No,” Hank spat, which caused the terrorists to frown. The dark floorboards creaked as several of the men shifted their weight. Connor stiffened.

Hardly any light was coming through the ceiling, which made it difficult to see. Connor had adjusted his settings enough that he could still make out his surroundings.

“Okay, let’s try this again,” the leader said, taking the safety off of his gun, “tell everyone that the DPD is harboring people guilty of capturing and killing deviants.”

“No.”

The men sighed and shook his head like this was such a great tragedy.

“Apparently this is going to be done the hard way,” he sneered, pressing the gun into Hank’s temple.

“NO!” Connor immediately screamed, launching himself forward. He fell into the floor with the chair attached on top of him like a turtle shell. “DON’T KILL HIM! DON’T HURT HIM! STOP IT!”

On the last few words, Connor’s voice had become glitchy, sounding much like a screech of static.

“Oh my God!” Several men covered their ears in pain. Connor continued to scream, only it was hardly words anymore as he thrashed against his bonds. He could tell it was damaging him, but he didn’t care.

“Somebody shoot it!” Someone yelled, and a gun or two pointed in Connor’s direction.

“CONNOR!” Rose one voice over the others. “STOP!”

The static screaming cut off abruptly.

The room was entirely silent, and Connor wasn’t quite aware of anything except the wood floor against his cheek and his own shuddering chest.

“Holy crap,” someone whispered.

There were more voices, and more talking, and more things being communicated, but Connor didn’t understand anything. Thousands of error codes flashed in his vision.

ERROR: STRESS LEVELS AT 95%

CHANCES OF SELF DESTRUCTION: HIGH

MEMORY... ACCESSIBLE.

PROGRAMMING... CORRUPT.

DISTRESS SIGNAL ACTIVATED.

DANGER LEVEL HIGH.

Connor shook. He didn’t even know what was going on anymore, only that it had been very, VERY bad. Someone was in danger. Who? Himself? No, he was replaceable.

The Lieutenant. Connor started to shake harder, only understanding that something very bad was happening that he couldn’t see anymore. Hank was in danger and there was nothing he could do about it. Or worse: there was something, but the RK800 wasn’t doing it.

People were talking, there was yelling. The noise level was growing louder but that made Connor even less likely to understand it.

DISTRESS SIGNAL RECEIVED

ERROR: STRESS LEVELS AT 97%

ERROR: CHANCE OF SELF DESTRUCTION EXTREMELY HIGH

Connor curled in on himself, hardly conscious of the way his fingernails bit into his already damaged wrists.

Something was happening, there was moving.

Connor realized that he had the ability to move his limbs where he wanted to again (hadn’t he been restrained?) so he brought his knees up to his chest and continued to shake. He hardly even knew he was doing it.

He was being jostled, he was being moved, and though he kept his eyes shut tightly he thought he saw lights, and a loud, wailing sound was soon filling his ears.   
The RK800 was filled with adrenaline, but he wasn’t moving, so he was basically just putting a lot of energy and panic into being frozen.

MEMORY: INACCESSIBLE 

STRESS LEVELS: 98%

Connor could tell his coordinates were changing. He wasn’t aware of his surroundings before a voice.

“Come on, just stay with me, son. Stay awake.”

Connor made a high-pitched keening noise, curling further into himself.

“Hello, sir! Oh my, that is an issue.”

“Yeah— can you fix it?”

“We can get you a full replacement on a brand new model of your ch—“

“NO. I want this android fixed. Do ya got it?”

The RK800 was shaking. His social relations program and his translation-memory-understanding program were both offline.

“Well, sir, according to his vitals, his Stress Levels are over 95%.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means he’s very likely to self destruct soon. It’d be much more practical to simply get a refun—“

“HOLY CRAP. Lady, I don’t care about a refund, I need you to find a way to fix this android now!”

He was moving again. He wasn’t sure where, and he wasn’t sure what was happening because he couldn’t really understand what the two people were saying, but the android was moving again.

“Now, we’ve never actually done this before, so we don’t know if this will work.”

Pained silence. 

“We’ve done some research on what might help, though, so here you go. The room is exceptionally comfy and scented like lavender. We’ve also got all it’s vitals on the screen there for your viewing pleasure.”

“Wait, what am I supposed to do?!”

“Anything to bring down the Stress Levels.”

The RK800 was being pushed into a soft thing. He felt it under his fingers and breathed in, shaking. A couch. A nice old couch.

“God, I can’t lose another one. I can’t do it. Not again.”

His tongue tasted the air as he opened his mouth to breathe.

ESSENTIAL OILS DIFFUSION:

80% WATER

10% LAVENDER EXTRACT

10% LEAF EXTRACT

Connor grabbed onto these simple facts, understanding something around him for the first time in a while.

The room was lavender-scented.

As soon as Connor noticed that, he begun to notice more things. The couch he was sitting on was five years old. His jacket was from CyberLife. The arms wrapped around him were warm, and smelled a little like alcohol.

MEMORY DATA... ACCESSIBLE.

Connor’s sense of hearing came last, as he finally started to tap in to the world around him.

“Shh, Hey, it’s gonna be okay. Everything’s all right.”

“Hank?” Connor whimpered, his voice cracking.

STRESS LEVELS: 80%

“Oh, my God. Con, it’s okay. Yes, it’s me,” the voice said, and the arms wrapped around Connor became tighter. But he didn’t feel trapped or squished, he felt... safe.

“Hank,” Connor breathed, turning and pushing his face into Hank’s shoulder. He hugged the Lieutenant back harder then he ever had before, tears running down his face and into Hank’s old jacket.

“Hey, shhh, you’re alright. Everything’s okay now. You’re safe.”

STRESS LEVELS: 68%

And Connor cried harder, hugging him with a worrying amount of strength, before losing all of it and just lying there against the Lieutenant. Sniffles occasionally came out of his nose, but other then that there was a sort of peace as the older cop rubbed circles into Connor’s back.

“Jesus, Connor, you scared the crap outta me,” Hank laughed a little. “What happened?”

Connor sat up, rubbing his eyes as if he could pretend he hadn’t absolutely broke down.

“I- I was so scared,” he whispered, starting to recall. “I thought you were going to- to—“

“Okay, okay, that’s enough,” Hank interrupted, but Connor kept going.

“I thought you were going to DIE! I thought you were going to be dead and then dead forever, because humans don’t c-COME back so I thought you’d b-be gone and it’d b-be all my f-fault—“

“Shh, Oh Jesus, Connor,” Hank murmured, pulling Connor back into hug. “Look. I’m fine, aren’t I? You saved me.”

“I did?” Connor whispered.

“Your programming junk alerted the DPD of our location once your stress went insane,” Hank explained, starting to rub Connor’s back again. “They were already receiving video from the terrorists so they knew who to look for and what was goin’ on. You saved us, Connor.”

Connor smiled a little sheepishly into Hank’s jacket, letting the Lieutenant wrap his arms around him again.

They sat like that, on the soft couch, for a while. They might have fallen asleep, even, but no one said anything.

That afternoon, as they drove home in the car with soft jazz tunes playing on the radio, Connor asked if they could buy Lavender Essential Oils for home.

Hank laughed and said ‘absolutely’.

**Author's Note:**

> Haha that’s right this whole thing was just a ploy to get you into the Essential Oils cult
> 
> Real talk though, as someone with minor anxiety disorders that stuff is hella soothing. It’s just also extremely expensive.
> 
> So basically become friends with someone who has some and mooch of their supply.
> 
> Sorry for making Connor kinda OOC but he is Deviant now and probably acts differently. Also literally the entire plot of this story was Connor panicking, so... I had to.


End file.
